]]>What’s next: the head of a hotel association opening an Airbnb? In a moment of delicious irony, a top official at New York City’s Taxi and Limousine Commission is leaving his post to take a job as Uber’s first head of community engagement.

As the New York Timesreports, Ashwini Chhabra worked for an agency that recentlyfought to keep Uber — and other services that let passengers hail rides with their smartphones — out of the city. Now, the rapprochement is complete:

“At first, they were adversaries — the taxi agency leery of a smartphone app that could upend decades of street-hailing history and the business that responded by hitting the tech-friendly Bloomberg administration where it hurt […] But more than 18 months later, with the technology now approved by city officials and accepted by riders, it seems the relationship has been consummated in earnest.”

Chhabra also suggested that some of his earlier qualms may have been off-the-mark, noting, “Regulators often move slower than entrepreneurs.”

The Times didn’t say what specifically Chhabra will be doing as Uber’s first “head of policy development and community engagement,” but it’s a safe bet he will keep busy at a company that regularly provokes both regulators and its own customers: Uber drew flak for its surge-pricing during Hurricane Sandy and, last Christmas Eve, its abrasive CEO took to Twitter to taunt those who objected to it raising fares on a big travel day.

Despite the brouhahas, Uber and other such services have become entrenched and ever more popular in cities around the world. In New York City, which has complicated limits on where and how customers can hail a cab, the services have provided a useful addition to the city’s transportation network.

]]>New companies like Uber and Hailo are shaking up the taxi industry with GPS-based apps that allow customers to summon a taxi to wherever they’re standing.

Wildly popular in San Francisco, these so-called “e-hails” have been catching on in New York City, too. New stats from the city’s Taxi and Limousine Commission show that customers made 117,000 total e-hail requests in June but, in a curious side note, the e-hails produced only about 20,000 actual taxi rides.

There is no obvious explanation for the 17% success rate but, according to the Wall Street Journal story that cited the figures, the companies say that some of the misses can be explained by the fact that a user tapped the e-hail button more than once. In other cases, presumably, the ride doesn’t materialize because a car fails to show up or because the user found another taxi or transport option.

Update: Uber provided the following statement:

“E-hail apps can work at times, but not when they’re needed most. We’re seeing success in the Outer Boroughs and at off-peak hours, but at peak times in Manhattan, we’re seeing growth in our reliable sedan service uberX but not so much on the e-hail/uberTaxi side.”

Change in taxi driving habits

The Journal story notes that many of the e-hails occur in the boroughs of Brooklyn or Queens where rides are harder to come by than in Manhattan. The story also explains how the new app services are changing the driving habits of yellow cab drivers, who are historically reluctant to take rides outside of Manhattan.

The new app services are also fueling conflict between yellow cab drivers and livery cab services, which are regulated differently under New York’s convoluted taxi laws.

According to Aarjav Trivedi, the CEO of another upstart taxi service called InstantCab, the e-hail system will eventually prevail because it aligns the interest of customers and drivers. “The cab companies don’t have a great incentive to serve you or the service. They don’t care about the customer,” said Trivedi, in a recent phone interview.

]]>Over the past year, the commercial arm of England’s almost century-old media powerhouse the BBC has been searching for the most innovative digital media startups based in London through its year-old accelerator program BBC Labs. And on Monday night, at an event in the offices of Wayra, BBC Labs announced its second class of six London-based digital media startups that will enter into the accelerator program. The companies range from a startup making a branded captcha, to a new freelancer portfolio site, to video image recognition software.

The main goal of BBC Labs is to find startups that BBC Worldwide (the BBC’s commercial arm) can work with on commercial partnerships. The startups in the program don’t get funding, but over a six-month period get access to office space, and more importantly, get access to the BBC’s huge network and BBC execs working on its digital content.

Jenny Fielding, who heads up of digital ventures for BBC Worldwide (the company’s venture arm) and also leads BBC Labs, told me during the event that her metric of success for BBC Labs is whether a significant number of the startups that go through the program can seal a commercial deal with the BBC. She noted that “We’re about three out of six for the first class of startups.” Startups from the first class that were able to do deals with the BBC include video tagging company wireWAX, and mobile learning startup KO-SU.

For the startups, the key to the program is landing the BBC as an anchor customer. Howard Kingston, founder of Future Ad Labs, one of the companies in the second batch of BBC Labs, told me that a deal with the BBC could “make” a company at a very early stage in the company’s life.

All of the startups in the BBC Labs program come from London’s emerging tech scene, which is receiving growing attention from the major U.S. internet players, the U.K. government, new and seasoned entrepreneurs, and the world’s venture capitalists. There’s hundreds of web and mobile startups that have emerged from London in recent years, including some well-known firms like car service Hailo, and gaming company Mind Candy. In part because of this, we’ll be holding our second-annual Structure:Europe event in London in September (more info on that here and more info on the Structure:Europe Startup Zone here).

Here’s the six startups that the BBC Labs chose for its second summer accelerator program:

1). Future Ad Labs: The company has created a new kind of captcha that brands can use to create interactive games and content. The idea is that there are 300 million captchas completed every day, and that content is a valuable and under-utilized space for brands. The company’s “playcaptcha” is a captcha that guarantees user engagement, Kingston said in his short pitch to the audience.

2). The Backscratchers: The Backscratchers is a free-to-use freelancer community for the creative industry. Freelance photographers, writers, musicians and artists, and designers are hand-picked and filtered by the company, and the startup makes a cut off when a freelancer is hired by a creative agency.

3). Peekabu Studios: The startup develops software that enables any video camera to be able to recognize an object or an image. The company can use the image recognition software to create branded experiences. For example, a food network show could use a spatula (or some cooking item) as a image-recognition password to open up a branded game.

4). Animal Vegetable Mineral: The company creates content for the intersection of television and gaming. One brand they’re likely trying to emulate is Rovio’s Angry Birds, which broke out across TV and even film.

5). Social Spree: This startup is working on a service that tracks social media engagement across platforms and helps content providers manage and boost social media activity.

6). Oddizzi: Oddizzi is a content company that makes educational material for schools internationally. The characters Odd and Izzi teach children different lessons.

This article was updated at 11:30 AM BST on June 19 to reflect clarification that the accelerator is part of the BBC’s commercial division BBC Worldwide.

]]>Car and ride sharing are part of a small but growing segment of American transportation, as people particularly in urban areas turn to them for cost and convenience reasons. The RAND Corp. estimates that the pool of Americans that car share will jump from a quarter of a percent to 4.5 percent.

Last week, Lyft received $60 million in a Series C funding round, making it one of the most well-funded ride-sharing startups around. Meanwhile, one of the original car-sharing services, ZipCar, was bought by Avis at the beginning of this year; it went public in 2011. So far, the major car/ride-sharing startups have raised a total of $285 million in venture funds—half of which came solely from Zipcar and Lyft. For this chart, we looked at some of the more well-established car-sharing services—as well as their taxi counterparts—to see how much money they’ve raised and how far they’ve traveled.

]]>The finalists for the 2012 Crunchies have been released, and now it’s time to decide who should rewarded for their technology innovation and leadership over the course of 2012.

The list of honorees follows below, and it’s a list packed with newcomers as well as Silicon Valley veterans. Thanks to all for voting in the nomination process, and now that we’ve narrowed it down to five candidates for each award, don’t forget to vote for which person or company you think is most deserving. Voting begins today (the voting page can be found here, and the rules are here) and closes on January 24th.

As a reminder, the Crunchies, a joint production with our friends at Techcrunch and Venturebeat, will take place on Thursday, January 31, 2013, from 7:30pm to 11:30pm at Louise M. Davies Symphony Hall, 201 Van Ness Ave, San Francisco. You can purchase tickets here.

So, without any further delay, the nominees for the 2012 Crunchies are as follows:

]]>The mobile phone is an ideal tool for booking something at the last minute, as you always have it with you. This concept has already become entrenched in the hotel-booking space through the likes of Hotel Tonight and Blink and in taxi-booking through Hailo et al, and WillCall is employing it for gigs and theater in a couple of U.S. cities. Now YPlan, a London-based outfit, is trying the same idea for more general events.

YPlan’s Passbook-integrated iOS app only works for the British capital at launch, but it offers an interesting range of events, from gigs (Hot Chip and Chemical Brothers co-manager Robert Linney is a backer) to shows, whiskey tasting, rooftop cinema and, er, chessboxing (a thing, apparently).

“For bands, live concerts and events present the biggest revenue drivers. But many of these live events aren’t sold to capacity, with millions of seats staying empty every year,” Linney said. “YPlan is aiming to change that for the better. Not only does it give YPlan’s customers immediate access to some of the coolest live performances in London, but it also helps the artists by allowing more fans to discover and see their shows.”

Compared with social event discovery services such as Vamos, this is a much more curated affair, with an element of learning the user’s tastes.

“We learn everything from what the user does,” YPlan founder Rytis Vitkauskas told me. “We track the clicking and booking patterns and we become smarter over time. This only works once you have lots and lots of events. That is ultimately the objective, to always have a shortlist, but a pretty well-tailored list.”

Now, about that ‘lots and lots of events’ point. YPlan isn’t really starting out with that many, largely because it sources its events directly. The sales team is led by an ex-Time Out digital director, though, so there’s clearly experience on that front.

YPlan quietly took in a round earlier this year and, according to Vitkauskas, it won’t need any more cash until next year, when it expands out of London. “Then we do the States, starting from the East Coast, then back to Europe — Berlin and Spanish cities,” he said.

Given the highly curated nature of the service, I would imagine that YPlan will have to be very deliberate about its growth strategy. But it will be interesting to see how it pans out, particularly as a more tightly-controlled counterpoint to the social tack taken by the likes of Vamos.

]]>The nationwide battle between the taxi industry and Uber took another twist this week as San Francisco cabbies filed a class action lawsuit, claiming the upstart car service is engaged in unfair competition and illegal interference in business relations.

In a complaint filed in California Superior Court, cab drivers Leonid Goncharov and Mohammed Edine say Uber drivers are breaching San Francisco taxi laws by, for instance, not accepting cash and failing to use meters.

The two drivers say they have brought the case on behalf of all other San Francisco cabbies, and are seeking an injunction to shut Uber down and an order for the company to hand over its profits since 2010.

The case turns on the distinction between taxis and “limousines” or black cars which are not permitted to take street hails. Uber claims it is part of the former class while the lawsuit points to Uber’s “e-hails” and dispatch service to say it is the latter. In other words, if it acts like a taxi, it should be regulated like a taxi. (you can read the full filing below).

Update: Uber has retained prominent lawyer John Quinn who said in an email that the company complies with all laws and that, “Uber would rather compete for business on the streets of San Francisco than in the courtroom, but Uber will defend these claims in court and is confident of the outcome.”

In the bigger picture, Uber has come under fire because its business model — which allows people to summon cabs based on the GPS in their smartphones and pay with a pre-stored credit card — is proving disruptive to the traditional taxi business.

Outspoken Uber owner Travis Kalanik has been clashing with cabbies head-on. He recently railed against “industry corruption” and said Uber “would continue to fight the good fight,” according to The Next Web, which was first to report the story.

While Kalanik has succeeded in rallying users and tech types to his defense, the story may not be as simple as a hidebound industry resisting an innovator. That’s because taxis provide a vital transportation function like buses or semi-trucks, and cities have long used rules in an attempt to make them safe and available to everyone (that’s not to say the existing system works). While Uber and other upstarts like Hailo appear to have discovered a more efficient distribution model, it appears likely they will have to jump through a hoop or two before becoming a permanent part of the urban transportation eco-system.

]]>When it comes to taxi apps for the smartphone, the U.S. has a few to choose from – depending on the city, there’s Uber, Hailo… and now, if you’re in Washington D.C., there’s myTaxi.

MyTaxi is actually an older service than the aforementioned upstarts. It’s been going in Germany since mid-2009 and, reflecting quite a lot of international expansion since then, it now claims 2.3 million users and a taxi base of over 18,000.

D.C. is its first U.S. play, and it announced the move in a cute, if crackly, Ustream performance on Wednesday. The functionality of the iOS and Android app should be fairly familiar by now: a peer-to-peer connection between the driver and passenger, a rating system for the drivers and live-tracking of the approaching cab. MyTaxi also has an in-app fare calculator, which is useful.

A driver-side version of the app also exists, for helping drivers monitor customer locations and get some basic information on them.

“Americans took more than 10 billion trips on public transportation last year,” myTaxi CEO Niclaus Mewes said in a statement. “Smartphones can have an immense impact on urban mobility. At myTaxi we want to rethink and reshape how taxi trips are taken. Passengers and drivers want something convenient, transparent and tailored to their needs. We want to deliver on that.”

Rethink and reshape how taxi trips are taken? That seems a bit strong, given that the idea has already become pretty hot in the U.S. over the last couple of years, and plenty of players are trying to take over the space.

But wait, there’s more…

It’s true that myTaxi does have some differentiators up its sleeve, and not just its share-grabbing $5-voucher launch offer. For one thing, the company seems to have the endorsement of the D.C. Taxicab Commission – a useful kind of thing to have, when you look at the troubles Uber has been having in Chicago, New York and, uh, D.C.

“The D.C. Taxicab Commission welcomes any electronic reservation company such as myTaxi, bringing technological advancements to the District of Columbia,” D.C. Taxicab Commission chairperson Ron Linton said. “We are delighted that passengers using DC public vehicles-for-hire will enjoy the enhanced quality of service.”

But the really interesting thing about myTaxi becomes apparent when you look at its investors. One of the big ones is Daimler’s Car2Go car-sharing service. And talk about synergies.

MyTaxi and Car2Go are in fact sharing an office in D.C., and that looks set to be a trend. I asked myTaxi spokeswoman Lina Wueller where in the U.S. myTaxi would expand to next, and she refused to name names but did suggest I check out where Car2Go is active. So that would be places like Miami and Austin, then.

And here’s why:

“We are planning to integrate myTaxi into [Car2Go’s] app,” Wueller said. “We’re going to launch that firstly in Europe, and then in other markets.

“We’re aiming for people not needing to own cars anymore.”

So that’s the trick: if you’re out and about, and you need a car, you’ll use Car2Go’s app to find the closest one that’s available for you to drive. If you can’t find a suitable car, or you’re not in a driving mood, you’ll hail a cab through myTaxi, from the same app.

Clever strategy. But will it be enough to displace the companies that have been taking over the U.S. market over the last couple of years? If myTaxi and Car2Go can expand fast enough, they may stand a chance.